Monthly Archives: May 2015

Whenever you are online you have a high chance of making a simple mistake that can cause you a lot of grief. The simple mistake I mention is where you are on a website and you either click an enticing link or you sign up to the website you are visiting. You are probably still thinking how can the brief scenarios I outline above lead to a simple mistake, and you would be right in thinking this as the mistake I am referring to is one that a large number of people make whilst online. Whenever you sign up to a website or online service you will probably make the mistake that 90% of people do which is to sign up using your main email address.

The moment you sign up with your main email address, there is a pretty good chance that you will also have given them any optional data that they were looking for such as your address or date of birth. You may also come across a website that allows you to sign up instantly using your Facebook, Google or Linkedin login details and as this means you don’t have to fill in any online application form you will probably do this. The website or service that you have signed up to now knows more about you than they should and will constantly send you emails that you may not want to receive.

Imagine you are in a bar and you meet someone who is in the same line of work as you. This person might be able to put some work your way, are you going to tell this person, your data of birth, your home address and your marital status? Of course you won’t yet you willingly do this online. If the website or service that you sign up to is one that you implicitly trust then sign up with your main email address. If you sign up to a website to get some free software, a free e-book, or free online service and you don’t know much about the site why not sign up using a secondary email address.

Secondary Email Addresses are email addresses that you sign up to use which are not directly linked to you. When you use it to sign up to a website or online service, you do so knowing that you can receive spam and it won’t clog up your main email address.

By using a secondary email address you are also reducing your digital footprint ensuring that less information is about you online and it can also be used as a component of two factor authentication.